VICTORA: Memorial Day is about memories, so be a good one

Published: Saturday, May 25, 2013 at 03:50 PM.

Growing up, Memorial Day weekend was always spent driving several hours to the small town of Muscoda, Wis., to lay flowers on the grave of relatives I didn’t remember.

While we were there, we’d visit my father’s second cousin and then drive through the town where businesses and parks were named after my relatives.

I continued this tradition, on and off, through my 20s and can still picture the large gray granite tombstone marking my grandparents’ final resting place. And then I stopped.

For close to 20 years, I have lived half a country away from Muscoda and doubt I will ever go back.

But each year on Memorial Day I remember.

I think of all the people who have slipped through my life and onto the next one.

I think about my father — not as he was in the end — but as how he must have been as a young man shipping out to World War II.

I still have his impossibly small white T-shirt with U.S. Army stenciled across the front and his government-issued duffle bag.

I also have the hasty notes he wrote to his mother, who had been widowed since Dad was 16, and a few faded square pictures of him in his uniform.

For awhile, I also had wallet-sized photos of the girls he dated during those years. My father was a busy man, with a life I scarcely know about.

That’s the way it is, though.

We leave behind our childhoods and eventually most of the people who knew us then.

We move into our young adult years, sometimes with the people with whom we will spend the rest of our lives and sometimes with people we will never see again.

Then we hit our 30s and it’s like we sat on a giant slide and started hurtling toward the bottom. We pass our 40s and rush into our 50s, trying to slow down long enough to grab onto the folks we left behind.

And then we become the generation who longs for Memorial Day to return to what it was intended to be: a day to remember.

It is inevitable that each of us will someday become a memory, no longer here to see and touch and hug and reminisce with.

All the houses and boats and cars and Facebook pages in the world will not change that.

So this year on Memorial Day pause, smile, say something kind, do something kinder.

Become someone’s good memory.

Daily News Assignment Editor Wendy Victora can be reached at 315-4478 or wvictora@nwfdailynews.com.

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Growing up, Memorial Day weekend was always spent driving several hours to the small town of Muscoda, Wis., to lay flowers on the grave of relatives I didn’t remember.

While we were there, we’d visit my father’s second cousin and then drive through the town where businesses and parks were named after my relatives.

I continued this tradition, on and off, through my 20s and can still picture the large gray granite tombstone marking my grandparents’ final resting place. And then I stopped.

For close to 20 years, I have lived half a country away from Muscoda and doubt I will ever go back.

But each year on Memorial Day I remember.

I think of all the people who have slipped through my life and onto the next one.

I think about my father — not as he was in the end — but as how he must have been as a young man shipping out to World War II.

I still have his impossibly small white T-shirt with U.S. Army stenciled across the front and his government-issued duffle bag.

I also have the hasty notes he wrote to his mother, who had been widowed since Dad was 16, and a few faded square pictures of him in his uniform.

For awhile, I also had wallet-sized photos of the girls he dated during those years. My father was a busy man, with a life I scarcely know about.

That’s the way it is, though.

We leave behind our childhoods and eventually most of the people who knew us then.

We move into our young adult years, sometimes with the people with whom we will spend the rest of our lives and sometimes with people we will never see again.

Then we hit our 30s and it’s like we sat on a giant slide and started hurtling toward the bottom. We pass our 40s and rush into our 50s, trying to slow down long enough to grab onto the folks we left behind.

And then we become the generation who longs for Memorial Day to return to what it was intended to be: a day to remember.

It is inevitable that each of us will someday become a memory, no longer here to see and touch and hug and reminisce with.

All the houses and boats and cars and Facebook pages in the world will not change that.

So this year on Memorial Day pause, smile, say something kind, do something kinder.

Become someone’s good memory.

Daily News Assignment Editor Wendy Victora can be reached at 315-4478 or wvictora@nwfdailynews.com.